Boeing 737 with 132 people on board crashes in southern China

A Boeing 737 aircraft operated by China Eastern Airlines crashed on Monday in the mountainous Teng County in the southern province of Guangxi. The airplane departed from the southwest Chinese city of Kunming for Guangzhou with 132 people on board—123 passengers and 9 crew members.

Flight MU5735 took off at 13:10 local time (5:10 GMT). At 14:19, the aircraft suddenly descended while the flight speed also began to decrease from about 845 kilometers per hour. Three minutes later, the airplane disappeared from the radar.

Chinese television channels broadcasted images of a fire on the hillside where the accident took place, but no further details are known or if there were any survivors.  

After the news was released, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for the "immediate activation of emergency mechanisms" for rescue work and subsequent investigation to determine the cause of the incident. As a result, more than 600 operatives were activated.

Twenty-three fire trucks and 117 personnel were deployed to the site from Wuzhou, the city closest to the crash. The rescue team was delayed because the hillside where the plane went down is inaccessible by road. Firefighters had to travel part of the way on foot, according to El Mundo.

State-owned China Eastern Airlines, headquartered in Shanghai, is one of Asia's largest airlines and the first to be listed on the New York and Hong Kong stock exchanges. It has a fleet of 730 aircraft flying to 170 countries and serves more than 130 million people each year.